Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana launched to Promote Philately

06 November 2017 Current Affairs: Minister of Communications Shri Manoj Sinha launched a Pan India scholarship program for school children called Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana to increase the reach of Philately.

Under the scheme of SPARSH (Scholarship for Promotion of Aptitude & Research in Stamps as a Hobby), it is proposed to award annual scholarships to children of Standard VI to IX having good academic record and also pursuing Philately as a hobby.

Telangana set to get 24x7 power supply to boost agriculture sector

06 November 2017 Current Affairs: Telangana set to provide 24x7 power supply in order to boost farm sector.

The state government decided to take this initiative by supplying 'quality' and 'uninterrupted' power on an experimental basis in the entire state to the agricultural sector. 

Chief Minister Chandrashekhar Rao did experimental basis 24-hour power supply would be given from Monday night for five or six days all over the state for the agriculture sector.

Transco, Genco and Discoms SPDCL and NPDCL have invested about Rs. 12,000 Crore to strengthen the distribution and supply systems. About 23 lakh pump sets are in use in the State farm sector.

Marooned once more: on Chennai's need for flood management

Chennai needs integrated flood management especially the revival of lakes and water tanks.

Chennai's date with a strong northeast monsoon ought to be a cause for all-round relief since the water fortunes of more than eight million residents of the metropolitan region depend on this weather system.Yet the terrential rains in the metrological sub -division,exceeding the normal by 93 % in the period of four days from November 1,left tens of thousands of citizens in state of despair.Flood water marooned them in the rapidly growing suburban housing clusters, with many having to flee to safter places fearing repeat of the deluge of 2015.While there have been efforts to alleviate immediate misery through the distribution of relief material in some places,the largest issue of how the city deals with flood and drought cycles remains unaddressed.Chennai is a lower elevation coastal city with global aspirations, and very high population density.Scientific management should have ensured the preservation of the many traditional lakes and canals that existed in the city's core a century ago to absorb the intense downpour of aairf.bout 1300 mm of rain,most of it in an annual window of a few weeks.Successive governments have allowed the mindless draining of wetlands and their convention into air.

All the roads that lead to Kabul

The optics could not have been more significant. Just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Kabul and on the day he landed in New Delhi, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was hosted by India. As Mr. Tillerson chided Pakistan for not doing enough against terrorists operating from its soil, Mr. Ghani in New Delhi was underlining that the time had come for Islamabad to make a choice between abandoning state sponsorship of terrorism and facing the consequences. It was as perfect a piece of diplomatic choreography as it could get, aimed at sending a message to Pakistan that regional equations are shifting in a direction which will only isolate Islamabad if immediate corrective measures are not taken.




Mr. Ghani’s visit came at a time when the Trump administration’s South Asia policy has underscored India’s centrality in the ‘Af-Pak’ theatre. As Washington plans to increase its military footprint in Afghanistan, it is tightening the screws on Pakistan for supporting terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Both Washington and Kabul now view New Delhi as a player with considerable leverage over the evolving regional dynamic.


A central feature of the Trump administration’s new Afghanistan policy is an outreach to India. “We appreciate India’s important contributions to stability in Afghanistan, but India makes billions of dollars in trade with the U.S. and we want them to help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development,” Mr. Trump had said in August while outlining his new South Asia policy.


Kabul has wholeheartedly embraced this strategy, with Mr. Ghani terming it a “game-changer” for the region as it “recommends multi-dimensional condition-based approach for the region.” In Delhi, he was categorical in attacking Pakistan by suggesting that “sanctuaries are provided, logistics are provided, training is provided, ideological bases are provided.” In a remarkable move, he went on to suggest that Afghanistan would restrict Pakistan's access to Central Asia if it is not given access to India through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project. He referred to the Indo-Afghan air corridor as an effective response to Pakistan’s attempt to deny India and Afghanistan any direct access. He also strongly rejected Islamabad’s claims that India was using Afghanistan as a base to destabilise Pakistan. He made it clear that there were “no secret agreements” between Kabul and New Delhi.












 

The Development of the Gujrat. . . Lets discussion. .

The development of Gujrat after the NM era.




The little dramas around the BJP attempt to video Congress meetings, “offer” of bribes to Patel dissenters adds a touch of spice, a hint that the BJP is not as confident as earlier predicted. There is a dramatic energy to these situations. Mr. Gandhi for once seems content and capable in the driver’s seat. He looks fresh, well-groomed, well-shaved, holding forth confidently on demonetisation and GST. There is no longer a sense of fatalism, of the inevitability of defeat. The Congress at the local level has a few things to crow about, including performance in panchayat elections, thanks to the skill of its State unit chief Bharat Singh Solanki. The addition of Mr. Thakor vitaminises the party further. These are local chieftains from local territories who know local mathematics. It also highlights the unease among Thakors and Patels which might need fixing. Then there is Hardik Patel, a perpetual machine of dissent and dissatisfaction, casting doubts on whether Patels fit the Modi development model. One senses the emergence of a politics growing beyond resentment, a feeling that development in Mr. Modi’s world may not be as inclusive as he promises.


Watching these political tremors (or hiccups, depending on your perspective), one senses a demand for the different and the new. Beyond this one senses that the government has not only alienated a few dominant castes but is indifferent to Dalit feelings and sensibilities. The tremors of discontent combined with a new aura of competence the Congress has begun projecting conveys the possibility of a dramatic struggle. There is a sense that the local is emphasising its vitality again and as a wag put it, “A dogfight in Gandhinagar maybe more important than an election in Japan.”


Experts, used to the predictable grids of interest group politics, who believe caste has the supreme theme, might dismiss such speculation as trite and temporary. To this friends in Gujarat add that the Navnirman agitation too began as a flicker in the pan. But realistically, one senses that doubts about the economy and the spectre of unemployment that haunts the youth are creeping in. The BJP is seen as a split world, electorally formidable but economically incompetent. The stars are still there but the sky is getting dimmer. The dour pictures of Mr. Modi and Amit Shah inadvertently add to the gloom. The BJP might return to power at the Centre but a few upsets at the State level might add space to the future of regional politics.


But there is a symbolic challenge here that we must examine. Gujarat today is iconic of the BJP. A change in vote share, even marginal, might bruise not just the political egos of the Modi-Shah combine, but make the BJP feel less symbolically confident and less all knowing. They will be seen as bumblers of electoral math on home territory, a crime the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) may not forgive the BJP for. It might create a buzz in national politics, catalyse the voter into thinking about side bets and alternatives. The immediate impact on the electoral fate of parties may not be so important. One senses the BJP effort to make assurance double sure in its attempts to offload a bonanza of lakhs of crores on the economy.

A Drama I surprise to see,In Gujrat.Lets have a argument..

The Gujrat state has different type of rhythm and anticipation ,It is almost grab to alter the surplus ideas.


 Politics is sometimes seen as more than a stage where a predictable plot plays out. It is seen as a drama reflecting broader dreams and interests, a sense not just of who wins but what the game is about. One senses this in the recent events around the Gujarat elections. Commentators reduce the recent challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to an aberration of the Patels. The standard caste scenarios so readily available before the elections start playing out. Interests are no doubt important, and it is easy to portray them in a realist scientific language. But sometimes something more nebulous such as a sense of the political game becomes tacitly significant.


A New Script :-


Watching television, listening to expert insights between the sentences, one senses a mood of boredom about the BJP — maybe it is a boredom of its current inevitability. People want to see new stories, new characters, new scripts. They want to give all players “a chance”. The word chance is no longer an English word. It has been indigenised to mean a possibility of fairness, of luck, of an affirmative action in politics that allows other players an opportunity to show their mettle. Often as you talk of local candidates or a weak opposition the electorate would say, “They need a chance.” It is a sense of openness that sustains the quality of the political game and allows politics to often become the world of the unexpected. Watching Gujarat, especially Gujarati TV which is less linear than the English in allowing a play of body language and a sense of the vernacular, one senses a different rhythm, a sense of anticipation, a need for difference.

The Govt Strategy and Role to strenthen the Economy .A discussion .

The economy o0f india will the backbone of our internal and external strength including defense security and protection.


The Central government is betting on a two-pronged strategy, revealed this week, to rescue the economy from the slowdown. Along with recapitalisation of public sector banks, it announced a huge roads project, which will help scale up public spending on infrastructure and boost job creation and growth. The plan is to spend almost ₹7 lakh crore to build 83,677 km of highways, traversing mostly the northern and eastern parts of the country, by March 2022. The government estimates that the Bharatmala Pariyojana, which constitutes a major component of this plan, could itself create as many as 14.2 crore man-days of work directly, in addition to permanent jobs after completion. The benefits to the economy are likely to be significant if the programme, as envisaged, manages to successfully connect 550 districts as well as coastal ports to national highways, among other things. While it is hard to quantify the likely economic benefits from the project, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari expects the contribution to GDP to be significant. With money flowing in from the government and market borrowings, funding is unlikely to be an issue. The same, however, cannot be said about the other familiar challenges in the infrastructure space


With this massive roads project, Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be banking on replicating, or even bettering, the National Highways Development Project of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. However, its success will depend largely on how the government tackles problems that have held back the implementation of infrastructure projects over the last couple of decades. While ₹2.09 lakh crore of the ₹5.35 lakh crore Bharatmala investment will be funded by market borrowings, over ₹1 lakh crore is expected to come in the form of private investments. Private infrastructure companies already reeling in the aftermath of aggressive past bids and leveraged balance sheets will need more clarity to be genuinely interested in such projects. This is an opportune time for the government to bring out of cold storage the blueprint for reviving public-private partnerships — prepared about two years ago by a panel headed by former Finance Secretary Vijay Kelkar. Just as it isn’t clear why the government waited three years to unleash the full gamut of reforms needed to fix the banking sector’s bad loan mess, it is difficult to understand why little has moved on the PPP framework after the Kelkar report came in late-2015. The NDA government’s very first Budget allocated ₹500 crore to create a new body called 3P India to reboot the earlier PPP route that had left several projects stranded, with developers fleeing in the face of execution issues. That institution is still to see the light of day, while land acquisition reforms attempted in the NDA’s first year have also been abandoned. More attention is needed on these fronts to ensure this infrastructure ramp-up delivers, and on time.